


As If His Own

by mayamaia



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-12
Updated: 2014-12-12
Packaged: 2018-03-01 05:30:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2761409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayamaia/pseuds/mayamaia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>POV plus an infant, as ordered!</p><p>Can be seen as pre-slash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As If His Own

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Orockthro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orockthro/gifts).



> Orockthro's prompts:
> 
> 1) Thing I'd love to see (either Slash or gen is a-okay by me!): some sort of outsider POV fic of Illya and Napoleon as they go about their daily lives. Can be around the holiday season, or not, either is fine. Preferably the POV of someone outside of UNCLE. I'd love to have the POV character get at least a taste of reality at the end, but how much is up to the author.  
> I've read a few fic that fall under this trope, and I just can't seem to get enough. <3
> 
> 2) Two men and a baby. Take this and run with it anyhow you'd like. ;) Stuck in a mission, maybe? No convenient nuns to foist a child off onto? Who, of the two of them, is better experienced with small children? I have no idea, dear anon, but I have no doubt whatever you come up with will be grand.

"Anna Sergeyevna!" she heard in unending repetition, in dozens of voices throughout the day, usually called from across the deli her grandmother owned. She was beginning to feel like it wasn't her name any more, like it had no meaning of its own and was just another way for someone to say "Hey shop girl!" Anna could just imagine standing in the dressmaker's across the street, hearing another customer call "Anna Sergeyevna!", and looking up to watch Imogen the shop assistant scurry over in response.

But once in a while, every two weeks maybe, she would hear it said like it meant something, like it meant Anna and could only mean Anna, _this_ Anna that was her. The Ukrainian guy who lived in the building next door had a friend, just so dark as that Illya Nickovetch was light, who he'd bring to the deli sometimes. Mr. Napoleon would never say anything across the deli, but every single time he would wait until he stood close enough to talk quietly, warmly, and say "Hello Anna Sergeyevna. What would you suggest we get today?"

Anna would blush, and try to pretend she wasn't blushing, while she told him about the soup her grandmother had made, or said that the butcher had given them a particularly rich or well spiced sausage that day, or asked if Mr. Napoleon had ever tried their vinagret.

On those days she really loved working for her grandmother.

* * *

It was on a Tuesday in February that Anna heard the familiar voices bickering their way into the shop with a tension she was not used to hearing from them. Other customers could be always on edge or easily angered, but nothing had ever seemed to bother Illya Nickovetch. He said he had enough to worry about without making his neighbors dislike him. His friend Napoleon had never so much as entered the deli without a smile.

Anna listened, worried and curious, while she finished stocking a shelf near the front.

"...don't see why I should seem ideal for the job," Napoleon's voice complained, "but calling it good practice is going a little too far."

Illya replied quellingly, "I do not think anybody usually takes it because they are ideal for it, but in this case it was already your job so that you should continue in it is no mystery. And it IS good practice, nobody should be helpless in such a universal experience."

Anna peered around at them and her heart skipped, or perhaps it sunk. She wasn't sure what to feel, because what she saw was Mr. Napoleon holding a sleeping infant. Despite his protestations, he held it competently and carefully, close to his body with its head well supported.

 _It must be his,_ Anna thought mournfully, _and its mother must be away._

On seeing her looking towards them, Napoleon's posture changed slightly. "Anna Sergeyevna!" he called, across the deli. She shuffled towards him, a little reluctantly. Anna would have liked to have more time to think. And she did not want to see Mr Napoleon acting, however temporarily, like another harried customer.

"Two sandwiches, Anna, please, we're in a hurry. Illya'll pay." When Illya growled at him, he self-righteously added, "My hands are full."

While Anna went behind the counter to throw something together, her grandmother came waddling out to coo over the child and dispense a stream of advice. Anna noticed again that, for all the impatience in his voice, Napoleon was in no way begging off his duty, not even offering the babe to be held by the fat and friendly old woman.

Anna brought her handiwork, assembled and bagged, out to where Illya Nickovetch was smugly agreeing with everything her grandmother said about the joys of parenthood, his arms crossed and at the far end of the table from where Napoleon was absently rocking his bundle, which emitted burbled preliminaries to wakefulness. As she passed the bags with a touch of force to Illya, she took courage to ask, "What is your son's name, Mr. Napoleon?"

He blinked up at her and finally smiled a little. "Ah, she's not mine," he said, "she's my sister's. Illya and I are taking care of her for the time being."

Anna nodded, ashamed of being relieved, and wondered why Illya, obviously the more reluctant of the two, was not the one complaining, and how he had been convinced to help out. But what she asked was, "Oh, so you've never had children yourself, Mr. Napoleon?"

The smile ebbed away, then returned, brief and tight, as Napoleon inclined his head a bit and left wordlessly. Illya, looking suddenly concerned, also said nothing as he scurried out.

* * *

She saw Illya Nickovetch the next day, carrying a large bag of those new diapers you could throw away when they were dirty and grumbling to himself about laundry he would not do. He entered his own building, and Anna wondered why the two gentlemen were staying at Illya's instead of at Mr. Napoleon's, or at his sister's which would surely be better provisioned for an infant.

They stopped into the deli every afternoon for a week, bassinet in tow, Mr. Napoleon returned to his usual self after the first day. Illya Nickovetch, however, looked more and more miserable. He had dropped to single syllables by the fourth day.

It didn't seem like Illya was doing much of the work, though. Mr. Napoleon was always feeding and burping, and once even borrowed their bathroom sink to change the little girl whose name was apparently Allison. Her little basket also seemed to have a new toy or blanket every day, and something about the color choices seemed to say that it was always Napoleon that picked them.

On the eighth day of their care, Illya and Mr. Solo were eating calmly (Anna had been gently corrected the day before when she had pulled Illya Nickovetch aside and asked if the Napoleon family was very large, with none of the laughter she saw threatening in Illya's eyes), Mr Solo cooing nonsense at little Allison in her pink bonnet, when suddenly both men stood smoothly from their table and walked the bassinet back toward the counter.

"I am sorry, Anna Sergeyevna, but we are going to need your bathroom sink again," Mr Solo said, somewhat strangely. She nodded and led them in back, then tried to yelp as a hand clapped over her mouth the moment they were out of sight.

"I am very sorry," Illya Nickovetch was saying, "but we need to to exit by your back entrance before the gentleman who just passed out front decides to come in and ask about us."

Anna stared at him with wide eyes, seeing Illya as if a mask had just descended, he was so expressionless and certain as a statue. All she could do was nod as they sent her back out front, where she stood for twenty minutes, wondering if some terrible gangster was about to come in and demand she tell him everything about her neighbor. Then her grandmother came back from her shopping trip and shooed Anna away from the counter, saying she was so pale the customers would think she was a ghost and insisting Anna have a bowl of borscht to fortify herself so she wouldn't scare everyone off.

* * *

Mr. Solo came in the next day to apologize. He brought with him an elderly man who said nice things to Anna's grandmother for raising a girl who was so collected in a crisis, and explained that "Mr. Solo and Mr. Kuryakin were able, with your young Anna's help, to keep the young daughter of a very bright lady scientist from being abducted by members of a very nasty organization known as THRUSH." Anna shrunk away from their attention and tugged on Napoleon's sleeve.

"Yes, Anna Sergeyevna?" he asked.

"Who is this Mr. Waverly, Mr. Solo? Is he your boss?"

"Yes," Mr. Solo said, "Mr. Waverly is the head of the New York office of the U.N.C.L.E. We're the good guys," he added, "though I guess I understand if I've lost the right to be Napoleon to you anymore."

Anna's eyebrows shot up. "Oh no, Mr. Solo! Mr. Napoleon. Um, I only learned your last name a few days ago, I always thought your first name was your last name. Um. Napoleon."

It earned a smile. "Well you may certainly keep calling me whatever you wish, Anna Sergeyevna."

* * *

Anna didn't see Mr. Napoleon again for a few weeks, as he and Illya Nickovetch had apparently gone back to their usual work after their week of babysitting. But she felt emboldened by her new knowledge to ask Illya more about his friend, and incidentally about himself.

"We were friends first," Illya told her, "so the partnership was inevitable with my transfer. He's a very good man and I am good at the things he finds more difficult, so we do very well together."

"Are you calling him incompetent, Illya Nickovetch, or are you saying you are not a good man?" Anna prodded with a smile.

He laughed. "Oh no, but Napoleon is good at things I am not. He works with people. It makes him a very good agent. Every one of our innocents, Mr Solo will treat them as if they were his own."

Anna dropped her head, thinking of the way Mr. Solo always talked to her, thinking of his gentleness with a child of strangers, and of one quick, sad smile. She swallowed. "When did he lose his wife?" she asked.

That concerned look flickered into Illya's eyes again. He answered, oddly and gently, "A long time ago, Anna Sergeyevna, when he was about the age you are now."


End file.
